Sunday, December 23, 2012

I've been busy trying to mix my album, ok? It's hard. For me. It's hard because I don't have the slightest fucking idea what I'm doing. Did you know that the funny looking EQ waveform thingy actually has proper settings that can be adjusted using things like math and shit? Christ. All this time I was just dicking with it until it looked like a Geiger counter at Chernobyl. Anyways, I'm basically done now and probably ready to get this shit sent to James Plotkin for a wicked mastering. Also, my cousin/artslave Elena showed me some progress on the album art and it's looking sweet. Scummy and evil. So yeah, it's getting close to finished and I'm pretty excited.

In the meantime, here's a list of my favourite releases from 2012 that did get finished. Plus a little blurb about each and a link, if applicable. As usual, in no order.

1) MELVINS - THE BULL AND THE BEES "Featuring one of the best songs of their entire existence! Congratulations, 30-year old band!"

2) HIGH ON FIRE - DE VERMIS MYSTERIIS "Always a consistently good band but this one, in particular, is their best since Blessed Black Wings (my favourite)."

3) KILLING JOKE - MMXII "If you took the best songs off this and their last album and compiled them together, you'd be looking at a pretty untouchable classic (and also an additional album with a head-scratchingly high amount of filler)."

5) MELVINS LITE - FREAK PUKE "So weird how this band can keep rewriting the same riffs and have it be consistently awesome time and time again."

6) BARONESS - YELLOW & GREEN "I'd kind of written these guys off once I heard the Red Album but decided to give this a shot. Oops."

7) DEATH GRIPS - MONEYSTORE "This one is awesome. No Love Deep Web (also released this year) is my least favourite of the 3 full-lengths (despite the insane circumstances surrounding its release). And Ex-Military is still the best."

12) PS I LOVE YOU - DEATH DREAMS "Seeing what these 2 dopes actually looked like ALMOST ruined this whole thing for me."

13) HORSEBACK - HALF BLOOD "I was expecting a bunch of lovely guitar and piano ambience when I put this on, not stoner/doom....like....actual SONG songs with vocals and shit (interspersed with lovely guitar and piano ambience)."

14) LOCAL H - HALLELUJAH! I'M A BUM "I always have time for this band and they never disappoint with their Nirvana-through-a-Cheap-Trick-filter sound."

15) JK FLESH - POSTHUMAN "Somewhere between Grey Machine and late period Godflesh."

I gave that Swans album a shot but it just didn't do it. I've given all their stuff a shot, actually, and the only one that really sticks is the Cop/Young God album (which I absolutely love). But seriously, why Swans? Why now? Someone should tell Einsturzinde Neubauten or Chrome to release an album next year. They might get to headline Coachella.